by J. C. Nelson
I shook my hand loose, clutching my chest to stem the bleeding. “I told you, I don’t lie.”
The look of pleasure on her face would have given the Marquis de Sade chills. “Those thorns won’t listen to your lies, handmaiden. They’re tuned to his.”
Twelve
ISOLDE SMILED WHEN I jerked my hand to my heart. “Ask my father anything. See what answers he gives when he knows the cost.” She turned and walked across the hall, then stopped. A frown besmirched her face as her eyes narrowed. “Before we attend to business, show me your sword.”
I fumbled at my side, wondering why it always looked so easy to draw a blade in the movies. I drew mine and advanced on her, holding the blade before me like a shield. “Recognize it?”
Only the slightest twitch in her eyes betrayed the emotionless mask of her face as Isolde nodded. “Indeed. Father still hasn’t learned to use a scroll, or, what do they call them? Phone? He’s still using objects as his messengers and his messages. Two can play that game.”
“I’ve got a message of my own I’d like to deliver.” Closer and closer I stalked, still keeping the sword between us.
The thing was, I’d gotten smarter over the years. Most of the time, anyone who let you attack them wasn’t really afraid of being attacked. One thing I’d definitely learned from Shigeru was that a calm opponent was the one I should fear most.
So I didn’t swing or stab. I just moved to the right position, the sword tip within inches of her.
“Really?” She held out her hand, palm first. “Do you really believe you can kill me?” With a flick of her wrist along the blade, she laid her palm open like a slice of lunch meat.
I dropped the sword, gurgling in shock and pain, as my own hand split open, my blood gushing.
“You are my handmaiden, and I your queen. We share fates.” Isolde rubbed her hands together, golden light falling from them into sprinkles of glitter. She held up her palm, showing smooth white flesh, while mine pulsed blood with each heartbeat. “Think before you threaten me.”
I clutched my hand, willing the blood to stop, trying to ignore the pain. The white-hot brand of fire in my hand made it hard to think, hard to speak. I didn’t see her approach, and couldn’t have fought back when she took my hand if I had to. I looked away, afraid, ashamed of my fear.
“This simply won’t do.” Isolde pulsed with power, like an electric generator, and inside, something like a spotlight switched on, shining with the warmth of a million suns. The stabbing pain in my palm melted away, letting me open my eyes enough to watch the skin smooth together, turning pink, then healthy tan. The spotlight turned on me, healing the thorn wound in my breast, soothing the aches and pains and tension.
Too soon it faded away, leaving me under flickering torchlight, before the Queen of Evil herself. She wore a haughty smirk like the latest fashion. “Does my father not grant you respite from your wounds?”
He did, but not like that. Grimm always said that addiction to magic-based healing was worse than heroin, people cutting and wounding themselves just to experience it over and over. At that moment, I’d have given anything to bask in that feeling for one second longer.
Isolde released my hand and paced past me, picking up the sword I’d dropped. She swung it overhand, smashing it to the ground.
With a spray of sparks, it glanced off the stone and lay humming on the ground. Isolde held out her hand, and the blade leaped to her. This time she swung with both hands, a blow that shaved the edge off the corner of her throne.
Before I could laugh or even smile at her failure, Isolde hurled the sword overhand, flinging it like a dart across the room. It struck a mirror on the wall and sank through the glass, disappearing.
She dusted off her hands and looked to me. “Let Father have his toy back. That sword is inadequate for one of my handmaidens.” She held out her hand, and the fingernails from it grew longer, twisting, bending together into a blade laced with hooks and thorns.
With her other hand, she broke the blade off, swinging it toward me. “This is a handmaiden’s weapon.” In her palm, the blade shriveled away to a rotten husk, leaving only a black bone handle. “Take it from me.”
Honestly, I still struggled to push the memory of being healed from my mind. Every inch of me craved that feeling, the warmth which made pain a distant memory. I shook the desire from my head, forcing myself to take a step, commanding my hand to reach out.
I couldn’t avoid brushing her palm when I took it from her. I expected her to feel cold to the touch, like metal. Instead, she radiated fire. Rolling the handle into my fist, I clenched it. Thorns burst out from the bud at the end, resuming their wicked shape. The outer edges gleamed with reddish-black poison.
“Come with me, handmaiden.” Isolde turned her back to me, seemingly unafraid of the blade I held. Then again, to stab her through the heart would be to kill myself. Without even meaning to, I willed the thorn blade to dust and slid the handle into one of the zillion loops that festooned my uniform.
“Where are we going?”
“To settle old debts.” Isolde paced off down the hall, and I followed. I didn’t feel her summon a portal. We were walking down a hall, then we weren’t. The interior of the castle raced away like shadows fleeing light, leaving us standing in a ghetto of Low Kingdom.
The crowded throngs of monsters, hags, and hangmen reacted rather poorly to their queen’s return. Shrieking, screaming, running in blind terror, they trampled one another to get out of her way, leaving the dead and wounded in their wake.
Isolde stalked down the street, thorns growing up from the cracks in the concrete to finish off the wounded, until she finally reached a shop door.
One I recognized.
The Isyle Witch, bound shopkeeper in High Kingdom, oldest and most powerful witch in Low Kingdom. The witch who first saw the handmaiden’s mark on me, and longed for the Black Queen’s return. I hated her shop, avoided talking to her except on business.
“You aren’t truly mine yet.” Isolde didn’t bother to look at me, peering through the shop windows. “But you will be. When you have nothing left to live for, nothing and no one to love, you’ll give yourself to me.”
The thought of willingly serving her made me sick. “I’ve read all about your handmaidens. Murderers. Maniacs.”
“Not at first. We start with the simple. The deserving. The guilty.” Her smug tone made me worry. She reached out, tearing the hinges off the door without touching it. “Cariah, I have returned. Come out, and answer me.”
I’d never heard the Isyle Witch’s name. Never even thought of asking it, let alone calling her by it. Her title came from her hometown and, in truth, was the only way I’d ever heard her addressed.
The witch shuffled to the door of her shop, her yellow eyes wide, her toothless maw split in a crazed grin. “At last. I beg your forgiveness, but I am bound to this wretched shop. I cannot leave it.” She knelt, splitting the gray rags that draped her.
Isolde shivered, a mask of rage contorting her heavenly beauty. “When my armies were destroyed, where was my High Queen? When the seal bearers attacked, why did my greatest sorceress not defend me? When I lay burning in the infernal flame, you hid in the forest. For that, you deserve death.”
The witch’s grin turned to fear, her face slack. “Alone, I could not defeat them. A single witch against the Fairy Godfather, I would have died.”
“Then or now.” Isolde raised one hand; thorns grew from the gutter toward the shop doorway, wreathing it. Then she turned toward me. “Should she live or die? What say you, handmaiden?”
Nothing, if it were up to me. Let the two of them kill each other, far as I was concerned, and leave me out of it.
The witch turned her gaze toward me, her eyes reminding me so much of Ari, scarred by Wild Magic. “Remember? Remember how I have aided you?”
And she had. When Grimm
’s mirror lay broken in a thousand shards, I’d gone to her for fleshing silver to repair it.
The witch pressed herself to the door of the shop, the silver bonds on her wrists glowing white-hot as the wards pinned her in. “I will give you anything you ask for.”
She’d given me quite enough already. A love potion that nearly ruined the best relationship in my life. One I’d used to wake Ari from a coma, making certain Wyatt loved her. And at that thought, I knew what I wanted. What I’d accept, in return for her life.
“You have something of Wyatt Pendlebrook’s. A lock of his hair. Give it to me.” The words felt filthy in my mouth. Blackmail for a life, but after two years, Wyatt and Ari still couldn’t spend more than a couple hours together without him retreating to the safety of his warded home.
The witch’s gray hair flared up like tentacles. “That child was mine by right, to raise and love.”
“Fine. Keep the hair. If you’re dead, it won’t mean much.” I reached for my belt, and the sword, praying she would yield. As my fingers touched the grip, she groaned, a cry of pain and sadness.
“I will give it to you.” Broken, defeated, she released her grip on the shop door, sagging downward. She turned and shuffled back into her shop.
Isolde watched me, her lips drawn back with pleasure, her eyes approving. “I knew I chose correctly. Come.” She glided into the shop, and I followed, arriving just in time to see the front counter explode into fragments, clearing the way before her. The curtain dividing the front of the shop from the back caught fire, fluttering into ashes.
The back of the shop resembled the warehouse of God. Among rows and rows of wooden shelves, a thousand jars sat. Some glowed; some bubbled; some held things that moved if I let my gaze wander to them. It stretched into the darkness for an eternity.
I ran to keep up with Isolde’s effortless glide, and rounded a row of shelves to an alcove. A room, of sorts. Along one side, boxes and a straw mattress formed a bed; along the other, what was either a chamber pot or a fresh fruit arrangement two months past its date.
The witch knelt in the center of the room, her hands outspread, chanting. With each word, the stone beneath her bubbled and rose, like a swamp geyser in granite. At last, a bubble rose and held its shape. She burst it with a knobby finger, revealing a stubby wooden chest.
When she opened the lid, rows of spells lay cradled in sheep’s wool, but her gnarled fingers skipped over them, drawing out a rough leather bag. “Take it, handmaiden.”
I did, pulling it from her fingers, slipping it into my bra. “I say let her live.”
“Your recommendation is noted, handmaiden.” Isolde folded her arms. “Now kill her.”
“I said to let her live.” My tone made it clear that I wouldn’t be accepting substitutions.
“And I, as your queen, order you to kill the witch.”
If I hadn’t spent so much time around Ari, I might have died right there. The witch didn’t speak a word, just pulled in raw power from the air. Unlike normal magic casters, witches could draw on the Wild Magic, which permeated everything. Anyone with a healthy sense of self-preservation avoided confronting them. I dove to the left. The air sizzled above me as a jet of flame exploded from her mouth, incinerating the spot where I’d stood.
“Do something!” I looked for Isolde and found her floating, translucent, a few feet away.
She shook her head. “If you are incapable of handling the slightest problem, you are unfit to serve.”
A conflict with Kingdom’s most powerful witch ranked as “impossible” in my book, not slight. Witches drew on Wild Magic, from the world around them, and the longer they lived, the more powerful they grew. This one had three hundred and seventy years on me.
This time she didn’t throw elemental magic at me. The Isyle Witch waved her hands, sending a rolling wave through the stone floor.
I ran.
Oh, trust me, I’d killed things that couldn’t die. I’d faced things with more than one face. The issue was, most of the time, running away still ranked top on the list of solutions. Particularly if who you ran from couldn’t cross a shop boundary.
I sprinted back through the warehouse as shelves toppled behind me, sending wave after wave of jars crashing to the ground. At the doorway to the front of the shop, I stopped short.
A wall of thorns blocked the exit, grown so solid I couldn’t even see through to the front.
“Running away doesn’t solve anything.” Isolde drifted like a ghost, passing through shelves to float in the doorway.
I disagreed, taking off down the back aisle, narrowly avoiding a blast of pure force that threw everything, including the shelves, straight into the wall. I didn’t bother hunkering or hiding; I’d seen Ari look straight through doors and walls, and Ari wasn’t twenty-four, let alone four hundred. Behind me, the witch chanted, drawing magic from the air to channel it into a blast of electricity that made the air crackle.
“Come out, girl. I’ll make it quick.” Her voice echoed through the room. I made it back to the alcove that served as the witch’s abode and stopped. Isolde might not have cared one way or the other if I lived, but she had a point. Though the warehouse went on into the darkness, my only hope was to stand and fight.
Where better to arm myself than the storeroom of Kingdom’s most powerful witch?
And where would she keep her most powerful weapons, other than in her secret chest?
I flipped open the lid and grinned. Inside lay glistening triangles of crystal. Spells. Not the cheap walnut-shaped spells Grimm gave his agents. These were works of art, built by a master of spell-craft. I took three, stuffing my pockets.
“Hey, Raisin,” I yelled out into the darkness, wrapping my fingers around one of the spells.
In the silence, her shuffling footsteps grew louder, until at last she appeared. “I should have killed you when you entered my shop the first time. You are unworthy to be her handmaiden.”
If it were up to me, I’d never have entered her shop at all. I held out my hand, pointing my fist at her, and smiled when she squinted, recognizing what I aimed at her. “Any last words?” I didn’t wait. The whole point of asking was to get her mind off on some sort of retort. I triggered the spell without giving her a chance to reply.
From my palm a column of smoke burst, uncoiling like a snake toward the witch, smoke hardening to scales, steel gray.
The witch didn’t blink. She didn’t even raise her hands, but the spell twisted, tearing a furrow in the stone floor. “How dare you use my own armory against me?”
“You want to know?” Casting the spent spell to the side, I drew another and triggered it. A luminous fog billowed out, drawing a sharp hiss from the witch.
While her spells weren’t labeled, the way she held her arms in a cross before her told me I’d drawn something far more dangerous. Then she raised her hands, and pushed. At least, that’s the motion she made, and in one sick moment I knew what she meant to do.
A gentle wave of air pushed the cloud, sending it back toward me. I scrambled backwards, running into the wall, as the witch gathered enough magic to create a tornado. I pulled the last spell, setting my mind on the witch, focusing.
I’d never had any ability with magic. I could barely pick a card from a deck.
But something Ari had said over and over came to me. Focus.
I did.
When I detonated the spell, what I willed, what I demanded, was that it destroy the witch, blasting her into a million wrinkly pieces. I remember the light as the spell triggered. I’m guessing the noise was an explosion, judging by how my ears rang.
It threw me like a rag doll, back through a shelf, crushing a dozen jars, leaving me crumpled on the floor.
The witch’s laughter filled the room as she completed her spell. Ignoring the luminous cloud, she threw the gale straight at me, shattering, tearing, and
destroying everything.
Glass cut my scalp, splinters blew into my face, and yet, I’d survived. In front of me, a narrow sliver of shelf stood, shielding me from the blast, but with one follow-up, the witch would finish the job.
Or maybe not.
Trickling from a bag on the top shelf, a familiar gray powder covered everything still standing. I forced myself to crawl to the shelf, reaching with bloody fingers for the bag. Like a woman in the desert finding an oasis, I dumped it over my head, covering myself.
Bone dust. Made from the bones of some unfortunate victim, murdered, then ground up to a powder. The secret Kingdom’s boogeyman used to kill royalty for hundreds of years.
I staggered to my feet, listening to the witch chant behind me.
I didn’t care. I’d been a firsthand recipient of the bone-dust treatment, and when she unleashed her spell, it didn’t even slow my limp toward her. Too late, she realized her error.
Too late to stop me from sinking my fist deep in her stomach, and following it with a knee to the face, and toe to the ear. Finally, I doused her in the last of the bone dust, sealing her power inside her for longer than I planned to be around.
Lying on the ground, helpless, she seemed older. Frailer.
“Well done, handmaiden.” Isolde’s voice scared me so badly I bit my lip.
I turned to face her, forcing defiance through the pain, making myself stare her in the eyes. “I’m done here.”
“Kill her.”
“I won’t.”
Isolde’s eyes flashed the way Grimm’s did when I angered him. I’d done it so often Grimm didn’t often react to me anymore. Isolde, on the other hand, was a spoiled brat, not used to hearing the word no. “You will. I order it.”
“You can do what you want to me. I’m not a killer.” I spit out bone dust, nearly managing to hit her in the face.
Her face contorted with rage, scarring the mask of beauty until she looked like a rictus of pain and anger. “Darling.” Her voice changed in a way that made me choke more than the dust in the air. “My first command to you is given. Kill the witch.” I spent so much time panicking over her voice, I almost didn’t notice when I took the first step.
